David Cone joins YES Network

by anaconda on Jan 28, 2008 11:28 PM EST in News Comment 5 comments

A key pitcher and leader on Joe Torre's championship Yankees, Cone annoyed George Steinbrenner by returning after a year away from baseball in 2002 for a brief and failed comeback with the Mets. After Cone's retirement in 2003, he was given an essentially open invitation to join the Mets broadcast booth, but opted against it for family reasons.

Now, though, with Joe Girardi having left the YES booth to become Yankees manager, Cone will take the place of his former catcher.

Girardi and Cone had a strong relationship as teammates and Girardi caught Cone's perfect game on July 18, 1999.

Besides joining a cast that includes Ken Singleton, Paul O'Neill, Bobby Murcer and John Flaherty in serving as an analyst for games, Cone is scheduled to serve as host for the weekly program "Yankees on Deck." He will replace David Justice, who took on a lesser role at YES.

Personally, I'm as excited about this move as one can be when a sports network hires a former player to analyze baseball games. Unlike his former Yankee teammates Tino Martinez (who worked for ESPN) and David Justice (who flat out sucks), I think Cone has the tools and personality to do a great job in the broadcast booth.

He did serve as a YES Studio Analyst for a short time before attempting his comeback in 2003 and seemed to do a pretty good job. It's also nice to get another former pitcher's perspective in addition to Al Leiter, who I believe is the most underrated member of the YES crew since Jim Kaat retired.

Now, the network needs to rid themselves of Michael Kay to ensure a consistently intelligent, insightful, and entertaining television broadcast. Of course that's wishful thinking on my part (as well as an increasing number of Yankee fans) because he is essentially a fixture at the network and won't be leaving anytime soon.

Hat tip to RAB for taking us back to the glory years and best Yankee commercial of all-time.

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Comments

Cone

Can't be worse than last year's crew, can he? I'm not ready to call it an upgrade yet, but any change is the broadcast team is a good one.

"Have faith in the Yankees, my son. Think of the great DiMaggio."

by jscape2000 on Jan 29, 2008 11:15 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

totally agree

That priority number one needs to be getting rid of Kay. Sssssssssssssssee ya!!

by seanp23 on Jan 29, 2008 1:17 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Is it me?

I can take Kay. I can't stomach Suzy Waldman. If I were forced into a booth with her for 9 innings, I'd hang myself with my tie.

"Baseball is the background music of my life." -George Will

by Ronster22 on Jan 29, 2008 2:58 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I dont have as big a problem

with Waldman as others. I mean, she did lose her mind on air with the whole clemens thing but I am sort of indifferent towards her(which could be more of an indictment against her than actually hating her, but, whatever).

Everytime I hear Michael Kay speak, however, I feel like he wants us to know hes really awesome at what he does. You can tell he is just waiting to have one of his calls go down as the greatest call of all time.

He's also such a homer on YES and then overcompensates for it on ESPN by bashing everything about the team any chance he gets so as to appear an unbiased "journalist." Both positions are extremely annoying to listen to and further cement him in my mind as a know-nothing phony.

by seanp23 on Jan 29, 2008 4:46 PM EST reply actions 0 recs